


Feast Upon The Famine

by NothingEnough



Category: Left 4 Dead (Video Games)
Genre: AU for an AU, Condoms, Ejaculation, Frottage, Gratuitous Smut, Lubricant, M/M, Orgasm, Safer Sex, Sex Toys, Strap-Ons, Swearing, Trans Male Character, strapless strap-ons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 04:06:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15380292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: "Besides, there was more to probability than the numbers. There was the impact of that 100-to-1 event. The more massive the impact, the more you hadda think about it, even if the odds were against it ever hitting you."Trans!Nick/trans!Ellis smut, set after L4D2's conclusion.





	Feast Upon The Famine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kabumek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kabumek/gifts).



> No, still no new "47 crosses" material, but HOLY CRAP Y'ALL this was a blast to write. I hope that you, O My Fandom, have use for transdude-on-transdude action, because here is a lot of it.

“What’re y’all heading to West for?” Coach had asked that morning.

“Meds,” Nick said. He tried to force his own hand to stop scratching at the mosquito bites bandoleered around his arms with his willpower alone. Fat fucking chance. Down here they bred mosquitos big as bats. Why the fuck did anybody live in Florida unless they had no goddamned choice?

“Wellnow. I used to take a couple handfuls of pills ever’ morning. Can’t say I miss any of ‘em now.” Nick has his own thoughts about why that might be, but before he could bring them up, Coach moved on: “Don’t forget the ibuprofen, that’s the big thing. Might as well take it before it expires, and it does help my knee move a little easier.”

“Sure thing, Coach,” said Francis, sounding like the world’s tallest and gruffest Boy Scout, all stupid innocence. It was such an act that Coach gave him a double take, that Nick almost boxed his fucking ears in. 

But Coach let it go. He was too polite not to. And so Nick and Francis and Rochelle took the  _ Satellite of Love _ out of the docks and in about two hours, Key West began to loom over the horizon.

As he had learned from that seminal work of Florida geography titled  _ True Lies _ , the lower half of the Keys are interlinked by the Seven Mile Bridge. It’s actually two bridges, an old one for pedestrians and a newer one for cars, but the Infected have demonstrated no discrimination between them. Both bridges have been lousy with Infected every fucking time they pass by here by boat. The direction they move seems to change. Sometimes they all appear to lurch northward, and they can expect Key West to be somewhat less crawly when that happens--but sometimes they’re all charging for the south, and then he and his cohorts turn back for home no matter how hungry they are. 

Right now, they’re heading north for the summer. Which is good. The fewer bullets they have to expend, the better. There’s only three of them this time.

In fairness, they’re the three most ruthless motherfuckers left. 

Once they land, they cut a slow and narrow path towards the center of the Key. The turista shit’s all around the rim of West, that’s where you find the Hemingway house (no more cute little kittens with giant paws, either, he’s been looking and hasn’t seen not fucking one) and the museums and the, the marinas with functional yachts, and dead people bobbing to pieces in the pools. For what they had all agreed on fetching today, though, they had to be away from the more respectable, expensive locales.

Once they get to where the locals really lived, the part of the Key with studio apartments all shitboxed together in pink-stucco nightmare-shells, where the roads already crumbled from the assault of all those grasses and dandelions and the terrific salt air, that’s when Rochelle draws up closer to Francis’s side and Francis in turn walks a little quicker behind Nick. Lotta jumpscares lying in wait around here, it’s too far from the highway and the Infected are too fucking stupid to die when they run out of food. Any door could have a darkly-rotting surprise behind it.

Come on, cocksucker, eyes on the prize.

It takes a good twenty minutes of wandering to find the place Rochelle only half-remembers seeing on a previous trip, but once they spot it, it’s impossible to miss. It’s the only storefront in the strip mall with barred windows and a demand painted in gold lettering four inches high on the doorway: **_YOU_ ** **_MUST_ ** **_BE 18 TO ENTER_ ** .

“Gee whiz, look at that,” says Rochelle, pointing by jutting her chin up in the direction of a pair of billboards that loom over the strip mall.

Nick looks up, his nerves all ready for the shock of another grisly murder or suicide to jolt him into another round of survivor’s guilt, and he almost drops his skillet, he’s laughing so hard. He has to stop running for a second to get his wind back (should’ve never started smoking, so goddamn glad he quit).

_ JESUS IS WATCHING YOU _ , it says, complete with a sunbleached picture of Creepy Christ frowning deeply at something to his left. Which, as it turns out, is the very store they’re hoofing it for. If Jesus had ever been watching, and Nick knows that Jesus hasn’t watched dick in over two thousand years, surely He’s too busy with the green flu to surveil a sex shop.

***

“What-all did y’all get?” says Ellis.

“Depends on who you’re talking to,” says Nick. He walks straight through the den as though Ellis isn’t trying to get up and stop him with a hug; he dodges (Ellis has given him a ton of practice at avoiding physical affection) and doesn’t stop until he’s in the bedroom and the water-mattress rocks him up and down and the black, logo-less plastic bags they’d swiped from the shop all in a half-circle before him. 

“You gonna make some sense anytime soon?” Ellis, grinning despite how deliberately obnoxious Nick was being.

“If Coach asks where we went, you tell him we went to a pharmacy and got medical supplies. Anybody else asks, you can tell ‘em as much as you want, but I get the feeling you’ll keep this shit to yourself for once.”

“Y’know, I’m not real clear on why in the hell you’d have four bags. Is one of ‘em fulla nothing but batteries?”

“Batteries and condoms, yeah, and what the  _ hell _ is the matter with your imaginative powers, dingbat? This one” he touches the handle of the second one to his left “is about ten bottles of lube, and this one’s” the one to its right “got a few vibes and the like. I’m all fucked up about no more Hitachis, but I guess I’ll have to dry my tears and find something else eventually.”

“And…?” Now Ellis crawls up on the bed with him, leans over so the brim of his hat almost clips Nick’s nose, jerks a thumb at the final bag. This one has the telltale shape of at least two rectangular boxes, the corners jutting sharply against the sides of the bag. 

“Couple of realdoes. If you’d rather a more, uh, traditional strap-on, then we’ll have to get it another time.”  _ But I’m judging you for it _ goes unsaid. Why anybody would want anything without the Nick Seal Of Approval, he doesn’t know.

Ellis considers him with his perennial expression of narrow-eyed confusion. It hits him: there’s a bigger-than-zero chance that Ellis has never heard of this particular toy. The state of Georgia was not famous for its inhabitants’ healthy sexual outlets before October last. And after October, of course, there wasn’t any Georgia. Whatever. A lotta shit Nick took for granted hadn’t made it south of the Mason-Dixon line. He’d been kinda surprised to find two fucking realdoes in the same store, but then, Florida was seedy like no place Nick had ever been. Almost enough for him to forgive the goddamn mosquitos.

Ellis plucks one of the boxes outta the bag. Turns it over in his hands. His eyes widen when he considers the ridges along the bottom of the shaft. Narrow again when he visually measures how big around the bulb is. 

“That seems like a, uh, a pretty big ask, Nick,” he says.

“Shame I didn’t get you any cheese to go with that whine. Christ, it’s not that thick. It’s not nothing, I’ll grant you that, but fuck.”

“Okay, but--” He tosses the box in the air, slightly, testing the weight of the thing. The bullet vibe rattles in its plastic capsule. “--you got two.”

“Hell yeah I got two. I’d’ve gotten ten if they had ‘em.”

“Duzzat mean we could swordfight?”

“ _ No. _ You’re really not appreciating what this can--”

“I am, too. Grow a sense of humor, fer Crissakes.” He picks at the clear circle of tape holding the box shut. “I don’t, uh, which hole is it gonna go in?”

“Pick one and stick with it,” says Nick. 

Nick’s thought about the odds. He’s actually Matilda-good at math, in an instinctive, unconscious way he doesn’t talk about much. It seems unreal to him that Ellis turned out to be like him, only a few steps behind, but then, it used to seem unreal when he met anyone who was trans outside of a few strictly designated places. 

Besides, there was more to probability than the numbers. There was the impact of that 100-to-1 event. The more massive the impact, the more you hadda think about it, even if the odds were against it ever hitting you. Sure, it strikes him as incredible even though it’s happening to him; but Christ almighty, being able to say  _ knowaddai mean? _ and to hear  _ Hell yeah I do _ back and know that Ellis wasn’t straight bullshitting him, the impact is  _ meteoric _ . 

So, yeah, he’s gotta creep downstairs in the dark ‘cause he doesn’t wanna hit the lights and surprise the genny into dying--and besides, there’s the now-honed instinct to never do anything to alert the Infected to his presence, despite the fact that there were no Infected on their Key. And that’s because he’s gotta go to the kitchen to heat enough water to clean both toys, which he manages over the camping stove he keeps on the counter. He definitely woulda preferred a dick he didn’t have to boil.

But he’s in a goddamned mansion in the Florida Keys, still safely out of hurricane season. He can hear the warm rush of the ocean over the hiss of the water roiling in the pot. It’s the wrong half of the Atlantic, sure, but it’s still the Atlantic, the same vast grayness he used to steal yachts to sail on back home. And after a couple minutes, Ellis gets tired of waiting for him and he leans up behind him. Ellis’s work-trashed hands settle on the jut of Nick’s hip, he touches Nick like he doesn’t give a damn about the scars or the way some of the muscles around his stomach and his thighs have turned to fat, and just  _ fuck _ nothing’s supposed to be that good anymore.

He fishes on of them outta the pot with a pair of tongs which will now never be used for any other purpose. He holds it by the balls (and all joking aside, they’ve got a good shape to them) and offers it to Ellis, who grins all excited and takes it, his hand wrapping around the base like a lever.

Back in the bedroom and he turns the flame on their oil-lamps back to full blast and Nick fully expects him to ask a couple more questions, or maybe to hesitate, but he shoulda known better. There’s this slight disconnect between what he sees from Ellis and from his own memories of similar experiences; maybe it’s him being younger, or maybe it’s just his fucking cluelessness disguised as ballsiness, but Ellis doesn’t have the same, well, learned helplessness in bed. Nick rarely protested or even spoke much about sex once it started, since for so goddamn long all sex had been equally unsettling for him, and having a favorite position had sounded like having a favorite fungal infection. But this dumbass, not only does he  _ not shut up _ , he won’t let Nick shut up, either, and most of his chatter’s related to how much fucking fun he’s having and how does he  _ do _ that?

Ellis sheds all his clothes and then he kneels on the bed--awkwardly, the water mattress rocking him up and down almost throws him off--his legs so far apart he’s at risk of executing a split, toy in one hand, dick in the other. “So, uh, I was told there’d be lube.”

“A little bit,” Nick agrees.

Holding his own in his stupid hand, he fishes a bottle outta the bag for Ellis. Technically, Ellis could’ve done it for himself, but that would mean making him let go of his dick, and Nick likes watching those deceptively strong fingers pull back on his foreskin to let the head fully kiss the air, likes it too much to interrupt. He gets a second bottle for himself. With the bounty he’d brought home there’s no reason to pass a slippery half-empty bottle between them. That just fucks up the sheets and--

“Hey, didja get any of them condoms that’s for your fingers?”

“Yeah. So you’re gonna--”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugs. “My front hole’s, it’s alright, but since I got my druthers…”

And that’s how Nick ends up standing there by the bed, naked from the waist down, toy and bottle both so thoroughly forgotten that he almost drops them, watching. Ellis (alas) lets go of his cock. He slides a finger-condom black and shiny as a vinyl fetish collar around one digit, wets it generously with lubricant until it runs a rivulet down the back of his hand and along his wrist. Simultaneously his hand hooks round the back of his own thigh and his hips give one smooth provocative rock forward, his legs part a  _ touch _ more, and Nick absorbs the unobstructed view of that latexed fingertip testing, circling, rocking, stretching.

“... up?”

“Uhwha?” Nick says.

Ellis smiles, crooks his finger inside himself, moans. “I said that if you don’t get a move on, you ain’t never gonna catch up with me.”

“You must be fucking stupid if you think I’m that far outta commission. I take back anything nice I ever said about you.”

“Like  _ what _ ?”

Nick barks out a laugh as he clambers up onto the bed. Ellis has him dead to rights, there. The only thing Nick’s got going for him is that he doesn’t mean any of the shit he talks. Well, some of it, a little. But not all of it. Not about Ellis.

If he doesn’t get a move on, he’ll make a liar of himself. He doesn’t feel as old as he did before the world ended, but all the same, he sits with his legs stretched apart before him and a pillow hugging the small of his back. Been a long time since he had anything this big, take it slow. No, fuck that noise. He cracks open the lube bottle and glazes over the bulb, drops the bottle and his hips rock up thoughtless and  _ it’s so christing cold _ his pussy almost cramps shut.

He shuts his eyes. Waits. After a few overlong seconds, the wet tip of the bulb takes on a consistency other than ice. Okay, he’s got this. 

Nick and Ellis don’t agree on much when it comes to this part of their bodies. Ellis had planned on getting his uninstalled, occourse he wouldn’t want anything in there, but Nick hadn’t ever really thought about getting rid of his pussy. He kinda likes what it does for him. Maybe he ought to be more mad at it, but the first time he’d ever really hit his own prostate, his eyes had rolled back in his head and his cock throbbed so hard it felt like it got bigger, and that was that. The inflexible handle for his new cock pushes his lips wide apart. He becomes very aware of a hot ring of muscle glowing with the most beautiful  _ pain _ around the thickest bit and then a delicious relaxation as he forces his way past it, and maybe three seconds after that his lips kiss tight around the base.

“... ho, lee, hell,” in that insipid drawl. He looks over at Ellis. He’s not lubing himself up anymore and the condom’s gone, but he’s too damn busy grinning and staring to so much as think about finishing the job. His gaze runs like fingertips over the tops of Nick’s thighs and settle on how Nick’s cock almost lies flat against his stomach from this angle.

“Go on, I think you were just talking shit about me being too slow.” 

“I think you’re gonna walk like your ass is on sideways tomorrow,” Ellis says, whatever that means, but it barely matters when he also, finally, gets a move on and starts to work his own strapless into place. The bulb doesn’t bend much but the rest of it does, it curves along the jut of Ellis’s pelvis, the artificial shaft pressed up along his agonized cock and  _ yeah _ . Seeing Ellis’s legs quiver and almost dump him facedown onto the bed gives Nick this wolfish grin. 

He clambers up on his own knees, his hands grip Ellis’s shoulders as much for balance as for contact. “You getting a touch of the vapors?”

“You’re  _ so _ funny.” Oh, he’s blushing. His dark-honey curls are a miraculous mess and his full lips take on a smile that’s almost shy, and that’s it, it’s over, he can’t not fuck with Ellis a little under these circumstances.

Nick gives his hips a sharp swing. His dick headbutts Ellis’s. The impact vibrates down the shaft and torques the bulb a little deep in him, his poor abused pussy offers a cautious shiver of delight around the base; Ellis somehow grins around a moan then strikes back and this time the kinetic fire razes Nick down to his bedrock. He has no idea how long they kneel face to face, he just knows that it’s long enough for their horsey laughter to dissolve into almost-silent kisses and for all the dick-swinging to turn into an honest-to-fuck grind.

He stretches out on his back (no way he can stay knelt the whole damn night) and goddamned if Ellis doesn’t immediately fall on top of Nick, prodding his legs farther apart with his sweating hands and a muttered “c’mon man, open wide,” you know, the kinda crap that really deserves a knuckle sandwich but no, he relaxes, lets Ellis guide his legs apart, and then lets him shift his weight around until their shafts strain against each other.

He rocks. Both his hands are tangled in Ellis’s hair tugging it all to hell, until a couple of muscles in the small of his back hurt almost as good as his hole, until Ellis grinds faster and coaxes the bulb bang-on Nick’s prostate and  _ fuck _ so much precum pours outta him that it changes how the toy feels (not so thick) and how his voice sounds (not so loud) and how he moves (like a man who, after years of traveling, has just caught sight of home).

He doesn’t, he wasn’t ever this touchy before but he can’t keep his hands off Ellis, and it’s the differences. It’s how Ellis never got any fucked-up scars like Nick because he never got a chance to go under the knife. It’s how Ellis still has a bigger cock than him even though Nick’s had his released (thank fuck  _ that _ surgery had been uneventful). All those small differences remind him of the one big similarity and  _ that’s _ why, because he knows how goddamned frightening it can be to fuck. 

Sometimes a guy like Ellis just needs somebody to hug round his waist and tell him it’s all gonna be okay even if it’s not. Unfortunately he picked Nick and he’s kind of shitty at that sort of thing. But now and again, he doesn’t fuck it up, and now’s one of those times, he quits yanking the bejesus outta Ellis’s hair and hugs him close and his gruff voice grinds out “don’t stop I’m gonna cum” and  _ of course he stops motherfucker _ but then  _ faster _ and Nick feels a hot twist of air catch in his throat and almost turn into a sob, all that pleasure transmutes from pure heat searing his nerves to cinders into this solid swelling brightness right around his prostate.

For him, the end is quick and clean as a slap across his face. Ellis takes longer. It’s like his body is a cage and it takes him longer to pick the lock and escape it. Nick does what he can, he forces his narrow eyes to stay open and smothers an afterglowy yawn, his hand slipslides between them (he’s gonna stick to the sheets unless he cat-bathes, most of it’s sweat, some of it’s cum) and he seizes the shaft of Ellis’s new dick. 

“ _ Watch _ ,” he breathes. Ellis looks at him all wide-eyed, obeys, stops breathing for a second as Nick strokes him down to the base and gives it a slight twist, shifts the bulb inside him in a way he didn’t count on and  _ bang _ , that might be the fastest one Nick’s ever milked outta him.

For a time--coulda been five minutes or an hour, the memory stretches almost immediately for him--he lies still, his eyes on the white-popcorn ceiling with its hideous crown molding, Ellis at his side taking up all of his sense of touch, listening. There’s their breathing, both ragged. The ocean, hovering at the edge of his awareness like a pagan God. A few wooden noises as the house shrunk. 

He focuses, tries to pick out the din of the Horde. On quiet nights, the sound of ‘em all on Key West drifts over the water like fog. Or maybe it’s a mirage, or some shit. But he hears something.

Nothing.

“Okay, so, this thang feels even bigger now,” Ellis says at last. “How do I get it out?”

“Slowly.”

“Gee, thanks, Nick. Never woulda figured that out on my own.”

Huhn. They’ve been living together for too long. Sometimes, Ellis sounds just like him. Flipping the script like this leaves him with nothing to say. Unless he took Ellis’s part.

“Chill. I love you. I’m not gonna leave you hanging with a dildo up your ass.”

Okay, so still not exactly what Ellis would say, but it works.

***

The heat draws his skin tight and he feels like he’ll sunburn if he strays too near a window. He’s not sure what the fuck he’ll do when it’s full-blown summer.

Right now the sun is dead center in the sky and the afternoon thunderstorm isn’t due for another hour, so Nick’s in the den with the curtains drawn, and so is Coach. He doesn’t mind the company. Coach’s house is more of a bungalow, and he lives by himself, and unlike Zoey, he’s not a solitary creature. He’s fine with spending the day silently reading his endless supply of Michener and spycraft novels, so long as he doesn’t have to do it alone, and Nick’s fine with letting him. 

But sometimes, like this time, they talk.

“Izzat boy still working on the genny?” Coach says.

“Yeah. He fucked it up once and got really cheesed off about it,” Nick says, because he knows that Ellis doesn’t care if people know about his mistakes. “Now he’s only allowed down there an hour a day. And he’s got so much shit to work on, and the generator we’ve got still works, so he’s being a lazy bastard about it and I’m letting him.”

“Good to know you’re gettin’ along well,” and he’s not sure how sarcastic that is.

“We are. How’s the ibuprofen treating you?”

Coach smirks. It’s uncanny, seeing him of all people smile with absolutely no humor in it. “Better. Normally by now, my knee would be tellin’ me all about the trip I made here.”

He nods. “Getting old ain’t for the meek.” ( _ Ain’t _ , oh Jesus, he’s finally caught it.)

“No, sir.” He glances over Nick’s shoulder, towards the bigger window facing the ocean. “Did y’all have fun last night?”

“...  _ what? _ ”

“I don’t know who y’all think y’all are fooling,” he says, “but it’s not me, I’ll tell you that much. Dunno why you act like I’m your dad when I really ain’t that much older than you, but Christ. I ask what you’re going to get, why’s it so goddamn hard to say ‘rubbers’?”

“‘Cuz it wasn’t just condoms. We also got dildos.”

“Okay, I see now why you chose to keep that to yourself.”

-end-


End file.
